‘No Way To Run A Government’: Trump Admin Asks SCOTUS To Block Order Reinstating Fired Federal Workers
By Katelynn Richardson, Daily Caller News Foundation | March 24, 2025
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a lower court order forcing it to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers. The order to reinstate over 16,000 probationary employees, issued by Clinton-appointed U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup on March 13, allows one judge to control “the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” the administration argued.
“That is no way to run a government,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the application. “This Court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.”
Because the lawsuit was filed by nonprofit organizations rather than employees themselves, the court’s order also “let third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce,” the petition alleges.
The administration made a similar case against nationwide injunctions when it urged the justices to rein in lower court rulings blocking Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship nationwide. Chief Justice John Roberts requested a response to the administration’s request by April 4.
“Emboldened by the lack of prompt appellate review (often occasioned by the use of the TRO mechanism), district courts have now issued dozens of orders without sufficient regard for limits on their own jurisdiction or to defects in plaintiffs’ representations about the law and the underlying facts,” the petition filed Monday continues. “Those orders have sown chaos as the Executive Branch scrambles to meet immediate compliance deadlines by sending huge sums of government money out the door, reinstating thousands of lawfully terminated workers, undoing steps to restructure Executive Branch agencies, and more.”
“Only this Court can end the interbranch power grab,” the petition continues.
The Supreme Court declined on March 5 to block another district court judge’s order requiring the administration to pay out $2 billion in foreign aid for work that had been completed. Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, wrote he was “stunned” by his colleagues’ inaction.
“A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance,” Alito wrote. “Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”
Katelynn Richardson is an investigative reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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